Just a quick note to announce I’ll be live-blogging tonight’s U.S. Senate debate between Sen. Russ Feingold and Ron Johnson. If you’d like to join us, we’ll start around 6:15 p.m.
28 thoughts on “Liveblogging tonight’s U.S. Senate debate”
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As Rose Niland would ask…can I ask a dumb question?? What exactly is “live blogging”??
Oops…I guess it’s Rose Nylund. 🙂
It first seemed to mean that a blogger is at a (usually big) event, often in a designated blogger area were you can plug in and give as many updates of your impressions of an event to your readers as you feel like typing.
Now I see it meaning “let’s chat during the event in this little window-thingie on my page”.
Sadly, I had to look up to see who Rose Nyland is. lol Being clueless about references to cluelessness.
Yeah…I noticed it was like chatting online. I think it’s a cool idea. Maybe next time there won’t be any glitches. I wonder if Zach will be doing it for the Barrett/Weasel debate?? What say you…Zach…??
I watch Golden Girls every morning (and sometimes at night)…and Rose Nylund (she’s Scandinavian so I should have known it was with a “y” and “u”) says in one the shows…”Can I ask a dumb question?”…and Dorothy says back to her…”Better than anyone I know.” 🙂
I could definitely give the Barrett/Walker debate a try….
Zach this isn’t working I can’t get on
There’s no sign-in thing. I did this with Chief a couple times – something isn’t right it shows up as if it is a Past Discussion, like already archived. there’s no thbing that “greets” New people anymore It just says “replay” and keeps sowing only 4 comments and then says it’s completed event
I’ve tried with 2 different browsers
Yeah, unfortunately I had to end things early….had some things going on here on the home front.
oh, okay I thought it was a malfunction. I kept checking back
RUSS IS KICKIN’ ASS!!!!!!!!!!!
YEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!
(and Ron is even MORE scary than I could have imagined eeeeek!)
Yeah, Russ certainly did a good job tonight….
I agree. A very good job!
Ron Johnson did absolutely terrible. On some level, I got to pity him, he’s going against easily one of the most intelligent, cleanest, principled, consistent, progressive, (Despite what Progressive Punch says, voting Democrat constantly does not always make you the most progressive. ) and in touch with the citizens. In someways, considering how many facts he got wrong you can tell how detached he is from what is happening.
I always like these style of meetings, because it involves people questioning. Oddly enough, in some ways I wish they’d move away from commercials entirely, the flyers made to you that cost so much money, and focus on these debates alone. We could see more substance behind the style. I especially enjoy the ways the Town Hall Challenge and the style of debates at Universities.
Feingold didn’t hold back, he said things with facts to back it up while Johnson kept repeating the same lines. I hope as many people as possible saw this.
Yes the format was excellent. I liked the Citizen groups.
There was however one glaring embarrassment and that was Eau Claire.
Jerry Gallagher (Local News Ego) apparently decided no citizen was going to touch HIS microphone and that 2 hapless chair warmers well back from the camera was “good enough”
Just absurd and embarrassing handling by the Local Station.
Are you the GB/Appleton/Osh area person? If so – did you see Russ at U-Osh this week? The crowd seemed big and pumped-up in the photos, was it?
It was a UW of course he would draw a big crowd
I am the GB person, I sadly wasn’t able to go anytime he came around. Having two jobs tends to ruin anything you have planned since you can get called in at anytime – especially since you can’t make any money to even get ahead. However, in the photos it looked very pumped up and a lot of people here are rooting for Feingold – in my portion of the area at least.
Ohhh. I didn’t know that about the Eau Claire one though, that makes me seriously sad in some ways that it did such a mistake like that. It seemed to be one of the most fierce and interesting debates of the bunch.
Well if you didn’t notice it on your own then maybe it wasn’t TOO embarassing. But I thought it was quite a difference from the way the other towns had their citizens speak and be right up there.
Feingold was on defense all night. Feingold has a hard time defending his terrible voting record on spending. He says how he votes for the people and then goes to Washington and votes with Pelosi and Obama. Feingold has helped government grow to unsustainable levels. He voted for the failed stimulus, Obamacare and bailouts to the car companies
It’s not the fact the stimulus failed, it actually worked. However, we aren’t really having an economic recovery because the GDP growth in the past 30 years has been in financial instruments otherwise known as Wall Street which Russ Feingold consistently fights again.
Furthermore, a lot of manufacturing jobs were sent to other countries due to the damaging free trade agreements. This means, the nations jobs in manufacturing have not come back yet because a lot of businesses went belly up and closed up shop. So pretty much, we got the infrastructure but we just don’t have the businesses. However the banking sector on financial services are hunky dory.
Our country can’t be a functioning economy based solely on financial services and we continue these freetrade agreements it’s going to get us into worse shape.
Havin’ a chat with Miss Congeniality, huh? Good luck wi’ dat 😉
“It’s not the fact the stimulus failed, it actually worked. However, we aren’t really having an economic recovery because the GDP growth in the past 30 years has been in financial instruments otherwise known as Wall Street which Russ Feingold consistently fights again.”
I’m not sure I’m following, do you mine clarifying what you mean by this statement. I’m not sure what the relationship is between GDP and financial instruments.
I’m most likely voting for Johnson but in terms of presentation Feingold easily won. He came across like a lawyer and Johnson came off like an accountant– a lawyer should win that matchup every time in a debate. Johnson certainly knew his stats and numbers but he does not know how to debate. He had a few moments where he could have attacked Feingold’s answers but he went into numbers and stats to support his argument rather than simply turn to Feingold and give an impassioned response.
That being said, I thought Johnson’s strongest moment was on the trade agreements. He should have pointed out that Feingold;s position would result in a trade war, interest rates would necessarily rise and we would go back into a recession.
Tip O’Neill said “All politics is local” and when it comes to us vs them, it better be us and not them. I am not a fan of those who craft trade deals that export our knowledge and jobs. If our government does not stand for its citizens then why do we have it?
We should protect our jobs and our knowledge from usurpers of any ilk.
I dvr’d the debate and just got done watching it. Ron Johnson has nothing, absolutely nothing and what’s worse is he’s not embarrassed by it.
I cannot believe that we have Wisconsinites who would blindly vote someone into office because of partisanship. This is not a football game, there are lives and livelihood at stake.
That is the reaon Feingold was relected partisan politics not because he was a hinest and dependable politician. He was a lapdog of the left plain and simple.
Thanks Notalib, you prove my point 😀
That makes no sense. In 2004, John Kerry won Wisconsin by just about 11,000 votes over George W. Bush. Russ Feingold won reelection by beating Tim Michels by a margin of just over 330,000. Russ Feingold won reelection in 2004 because independents (and even some Republicans) voted for him.
and, WHY did Gousha feel compelled to help Johnson with answers?? At one point, you’d have thought the debate was between Gousha and Feingold. Ridiculous.
I don’t know that guy so I have no idea of his personal politics but yeah I was like wtf! at a few points there. As an impartial moderator there were a few times where he seemed more like a Momma in approach – smoothing a rough spot here and there.
I didn’t know if I imagined it but it sure seemed like people (other mods and some in the audience) looked a bit embarrassed at Johnson’s awkward moments, NOT in a hostile way but in the way you feel like when someone screws their speech in 10th grade and stands there tongue-tied and blushing. I didn’t see any looks of glee, like they were waiting for him to screw up so they could jump on his shit, they looked like more just uncomfortable. It’s one thing to “hate” a guy until he’s right next to you, the actual human. Sometimes he’s such an ass you still hate him, but we all empathize with a guy publicly fumbling the way Johnson did. (The Blindly Faithful will wonder what the hell I’m talking about, but a lot of people would have seen that as a future U.S. Senator, a job SOME people think is a Big Fuckin’ Deal, Johnson’s job interview last night was a SERIOUS Screw Of The Pooch.)
So, You might hate a guy’s politics, but there’s a human response to seeing someone look incompetent.
So it could have been partisan-ism that Gousha couldn’t hold back and so coddle RJ, or even OVER-compensation for charges that The Media Is Liberal (which of course is crap, because there’s no shortage of Conservative Squawk and who the hell OWNS all the media anyways, that charge makes NO sense but it keeps Noobs happy..) anyways,
The third option is just the way people are socialized to jump in and make conversation go smoothly. A more committed and truly 100% professional moderator will be able to just let those painfully awkward moments stand, they are supposed to let the candidates twist in the breeze if that’s how it goes. The candidate has to be the one to extract themselves from it, or not. He should have just stared blankly NO MATTER WHAT Feingold or Johnson said.
Clearly, we needed Commander Data to do this job!!!! No, not Spock, he has personal agenda which he is only barely able to contain, and that whole Photographing Fat Chicks thing is just TOO disturbing.
If you haven’t seen it yet –
http://www.rmichelson.com/artist_pages/nimoy/pages/MaxBeaut.htm
Just soo wrong for so many reasons.
and for those who object to my tangental approach, think how much more watchable Brian Williams and other Reportards (I just made that up, be impressed) would be if he’d do this sort of thing.